AUSTIN, Texas — As the start of the school year draws closer, the Austin Independent School District is working on plans for how to reopen safely. 

While the first three weeks of class will be online only, AISD is planning to give students and families the option to return to in-person school after those first three weeks. 

One family of a student with special needs says it is desperate for the return of in-person school, and will take that option as soon as it's available. 

“Pearce is cognitively a 15-year-old, he’s just physically unable to do everything 15-year-olds do, so he really misses school," said Abby Smithson, Pearce's mother. 

For rising sophomore Pearce Smithson, the past few months have not been easy. 

He has cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair, and relies on communication devices to speak, which has made virtual learning nearly impossible. 

“It might take three or four minutes if Pearce was to engage and the teacher can’t spend 20 percent of the time on letting one person speak. And so what's happened to us with the virtual learning is we just, we end up just being bystanders; we're present," said Will Smithson, Pearce's father. "With this virtual classroom he has not only a virtual talker in front of him but also now Zoom or WebEx. Now he's got one, two, three, four points before he can reach his peers. And so that's added, you know, whatever hurdle was there just for him, his disability, that hurdle's now a foot higher."

Although he has speech therapy twice a week over Zoom, his parents say that’s been the only way he can participate in school. 

With Will back at work, Abby says she’s not able to both work from home and help Pearce with virtual learning to the extent he needs. 

“I would try to start work around 9:30, work till 2 or 3, and then I would go back to work at 9 when he went to bed, and you know sometimes that was not - I was up til 1 in the morning," said Abby Smithson. 

They say any sort of academic assessment for Pearce is impossible with virtual learning. 

"Because of the speech device I mentioned, the button that has those choices, that's how the teachers interact with him. If they're testing him they'll have a question and put the answers A, B, C and D on here. And that's really the face-to-face interaction they need," said Will Smithson. 

Beyond the academic impact, they say the lack of socialization has been devastating for Pearce. 

“We want him to learn 10 times 10 is 100 but interacting with the students and learning new words and his vocabulary and just the social emotional aspect of school is as important for Pearce as the education," said Will Smithson. 

The Smithsons say when he's at school Pearce comes home every day with a journal filled out by his teaching assistant. 

"We can't wait to read it because he can't tell us about his day. So we open up this journal and it says 'At 10 o'clock, English, he met Sarah, you need to add Sarah's name to his talker. Liam, a friend of his, said add the word 'lit.' His vocabulary is built up by being around his peers," said Will Smithson. 

"It would say 'Today Pearce answered six questions in class,' or 'He raised his hand for every question in science,'" said Abby Smithson. "To know that he's out there talking to his peers saying hi, having lunch with different kids, it just is invaluable, really, for Pearce’s growth, and I do believe that other kids, typical kids, get a lot out of being around Pearce and kids like Pearce, too."

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended that students return to in-person school as soon as safely possible, saying the emotional and mental consequences of continued social isolation could be extreme. 

“Pearce is usually a really happy-go-lucky kid, and he’s been way more moody and sad and yeah, just lonely," said Abby Smithson. 

"He's already gone three or four months without social interaction. His two-week-long sleepaway camps were canceled. His three-week-long day camps were canceled. So it's going to be another two months this summer, which will put us at five or six, and then if school is virtual that's, it’ll turn into a year where this kid hasn't had any engagement with his peers," said Will Smithson. 

Now, the Smithsons say they’re desperate to return to in-person school. 

“If the loss of education were only this much, we would go, ‘Oh I will choose health over education,’ but in this regard we lose so much more by staying at home," Will Smithson said. 

"It’s time for us to go back to school," Abby Smithson.